Description

Duck Hunt is a shooting simulation where the player goes out with his faithful dogs to hunt ducks. It requires the use of the Zapper light gun. In game modes A and B, players view a swampland from a first-person perspective. The dog scares ducks (one or two at a time) out of the swamp, and they go flying around in the air. The player has three shots and a limited amount of time to shoot the ducks before they fly away. Each round only allows a limited number of misses in order to move on successfully. As the rounds progress, the ducks begin flying faster and faster, and fewer misses are allowed.

Mode C features target practice on clay pigeons rather than ducks. The perspective and rules here are the same, with only three shots to destroy two clay pigeons before they disappear off the horizon. Destroy enough clay pigeons to move on to the next, tougher round.

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Trivia

Dog

The Dog is one of the most infamous characters in videogame history. Why?

Well, at the start of a round he sniffs around the grass before diving in. When you're successful, he triumphantly holds your kill. But when you miss..........he laughs. At you. He stands up, points at you and chuckles. There are games on the internet devoted entirely to killing him.

References to the game

In the movie Boyz N The Hood, at Ricky and Doughboy's home, one of DoughBoy's homeboys is playing Duck Hunt with their NES sitting on top of the TV.

But the twist is, he first holds up a pistol, acting like he's gonna kill someone. When he fires, it sounds like it's real, but then in a second, Duck Hunt pops up, showing he's just playing a game. The problem is he didn't use a Zapper, just a real pistol.

Unofficial DOS port

In July of 1996, the underground ANSI art group Creators of Intense Art (CiA) released an unauthorized mouse-controlled MS-DOS port of this game in their 26th pack, downloadable at http://artscene.textfiles.com/artpacks/1995/ciapak26.zip

All game graphics were re-rendered as ANSI art by group founder/leader "Napalm", with programming duties falling to "Wizard of Id".

Unofficial iPhone port

A version for the iPhone, based on the NES version, was made available on 5th January 2009 for $0.99. Ported to the platform through an emulator known as iPES, Lucas Manfield (LawlMart) was able to recreate most of the game. The first version had no sound and recreated the N64 analog stick and NES A-button to control the game. Sound and touch controls were promised for an updated 1.1 version, but Nintendo had the game pulled on 30th January 2009.